Something To Do
by Slayergirl
Summary: Inspired by Jack's comment to the Doctor on Utopia that he went back to watch Rose growing up.


**Something To Do**

_It was just something to do,_ argued Jack's mind. _Keep an eye on her, make sure she didn't get hurt, where possible. He couldn't change her timeline, couldn't even say hello, but it eased the pain, filled the Rose-shaped hole in his heart, if only for a little while. Nothing wrong in that, was there? Being the guardian angel of the girl you… cared about?_

He sighed. She was twelve, playing on her new red bicycle that she'd got for Christmas. Of course, he knew perfectly well who'd given it to her, Rose had told him herself, in a hushed whisper. _**He'd**_ gone back in her timeline to do it, and now he'd… what? Gone forward into it, from behind, so he could catch up with it later? He frowned; even for a fully-trained time agent, it made his head ache. But at least it wasn't his heart that was aching, and that made a nice change.

He cursed softly as her bike hit an icy patch – it was still only January – and slid crazily, throwing her off. She gave a yell of surprise more than pain, and lay still for a couple of minutes. Just as he was getting up, about to run to her side to help her, she picked herself up, limping a little, and got back on the bike. He relaxed back into his greatcoat; that was his Rose, never one to be beaten, not by anything. He smiled, softly. There would come a time when she'd need him to protect her, but it wasn't today.

***

_Jeopardy-friendly just about covered it_, thought Jack wryly, looking down at the thirteen-year-old's semi-conscious body, her leg bent at an inhuman angle. He was angry with himself for not being quick enough to prevent the accident, but knew it would have been much worse without his intervention – she'd have been in traction for weeks. He sighed, crouched beside her, holding her hand. He wasn't really changing anything – much – she'd never remember the face of the man who'd hauled her out of harm's way, the man who, later on, she'd be told stayed with her until the ambulance came, and who'd slipped away before anyone could take his name, before Jackie could thank him in whatever way seemed fit (truth be told, that was why he hadn't stayed around). Maybe one day she'd ask the Doctor if it had been him, and the Doctor would tell her it wasn't. Maybe she'd believe him, maybe she wouldn't. It really didn't matter.

He brushed his thumb over her knuckles. "Just hang on in there, Rose," he said softly. "Ambulance is on its way."

Her eyelids fluttered briefly, and he almost panicked, but her eyes didn't open. There was just a feeble squeeze of his hand. "Thanks." A swallow of pain. "Who are you?"

He bit his lip and blinked back tears. "A friend," he said softly. "Just a friend."

***

Jack smiled, looking at the sullen-looking teenager who'd been left, quite literally, holding the baby. Her cousin's, as it happened, but it looked just like she had as a baby. He hadn't been able to resist that little trip – gatecrashing a wedding in order to see if Rose really had been as cute a baby as the Doctor had once twitted her about being. She had. She'd also had one hell of a strong grasp, latching onto the finger that had chucked her under the chin with tiny fingers that seemed as though they didn't want to let go. Maybe they hadn't – he rather liked to think that. She'd fixed him with a baleful look, and _screamed_ as he'd disentangled himself. "She likes you," said Jackie, with a flirtatious smile.

_Always did,_ he'd thought to himself, and had simply given a charming smile in return. "Girls always do." He'd fled, at that point; he'd have loved to spend more time there with Rose, but Jackie? There were some things even he couldn't face.

He looked back at Rose, holding her cousin's baby. _Not quite as cute as you were,_ he thought to himself.

***

_Jimmy bloody Stones. What on earth had she seen in him, anyway? A right tosser, if ever there was one._ He sighed. Again, a little too late to stop the fight from happening at all, but in time to stop it getting too far. Rose was hurt, but not badly so – a few bruises, a black eye, and badly shaken – but he knew it could have been worse. And he'd hauled him off to the police station while a fiercely protective Shareen had whisked her off, like an avenging angel. Neither of them had given the stranger lending a helping hand a second glance. _Probably for the best._

He saw them later on in the day, Rose and Shareen. Mickey had joined them, by then, and had a comforting arm around Rose's shoulders. He felt a stab of jealousy, but quashed it. Mickey was good for her right now, he was what she needed. His time would come later – or at least, had been and gone. Or something. But he remembered her telling him about that time, when Mickey had been there for her, and the comfort he'd given.

He swallowed his jealousy, and walked away.

***

_Eighteen and beautiful. _She was perfect, glowing radiantly, enjoying her birthday. Okay, so all he'd done was to have delivered a bouquet of pink roses to her, no name on the card, ringing the doorbell and hiding round the corner like a teenager. Not much, but what else could he do? She didn't know him, here, on her eighteenth birthday, and he wouldn't be with her for her twenty-first. It was something.

In just over a year's time, he knew, she'd be running off with a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord, but at least he'd eased her way through life this far. In a little over a year, she'd be meeting him in the Blitz, neither of them having any memories of the other, and they'd dance on top of a Chula warship to the strains of Glenn Miller, by the light of the moon and the face of Big Ben.

Eerily, Jackie's love of Glenn Miller prompted her to start playing _Moonlight Serenade_ at that very moment, and Jack felt a chill go down his spine. He looked at Rose, his roses in her arms. A chill ran down her spine as well, almost as if a presentiment had hit her. _Impossible_, he thought. _Isn't it? She can't know._

_Time isn't always linear,_ another voice, familiar yet unfamiliar, echoed in his head. _Sometimes it's cyclical, sometimes it's a spiral. Sometimes, it's even a double helix_. Had Jackie chosen that song by accident, or years ago, had he chosen it because he'd been standing here, looking at her, on her eighteenth birthday?

He shook his head to dispel the thought. _Coincidence,_ he told himself firmly. _Just a coincidence._

***

She had no idea why she trusted the American – if he was American. She just did. Of course, she'd just trusted the Doctor as well, but that was just the Doctor. Jack, though…

Jack… felt right. Comfortable. Like she'd always known him, like he'd been there for her, always, like he'd always, somehow, manage to get her out of trouble.

No, comfortable wasn't the right word, there was that… thrill, somehow… of meeting someone gorgeous, as well – someone you'd always sort of known, but somehow never seen before.

And how had he guessed she liked Glenn Miller? She shivered, though not from the cold. _That song…_

She smiled in his arms, head dizzy with the perfume of flowers long-since faded, flowers that she'd held in her arms on her eighteenth birthday that had come from _"A friend. Just a friend."_ She still had the card, and a carefully-pressed rosebud, in a pocket at the back of her diary. She always carried them with her as… what? Protection? For hope? In the hope that, one day, the dream captured within that one rosebud, that one rosebud that had never opened like the others, would be set free, and be hers? That the friend who was just a friend might one day be something more?

_And why the hell had she stopped him from kissing her hand, anyway?_

_***_

"…I create myself…"

The Bad Wolf saw all things, in all timelines, all cycles, all spirals, all the twists and turns in time that even the Time Lord in front of her couldn't comprehend. She saw everything, every detail of everything in the universe, all that was, all that is, all that ever could be.

She saw the Doctor delivering a red bicycle to a girl she dimly recognised as herself, the places he'd taken her to, the things he'd saved her from, the day he'd taken her to meet her father, and loved him for it.

"I want you safe. My Doctor..."

But she also saw another man, human, yet not-quite-human, who'd been there for the girl as she grew up.

She saw tiny fingers clutching at his finger, and knew that she could never let him go. She saw him rise to help her as she fell from her bike, and knew he would always break her fall. She saw him hold her hand as she lay injured on the ground, and knew that he would never let her be alone. She saw him protect her in a fight, and knew that he would always protect her if he could. She saw him watch her with his roses in her arms, and knew he loved her. And she loved him for it.

As she breathed out golden life on her words, a long-since-faded rosebud blossomed into full-blown glory, and the man gasped air again.

"_I give life_."


End file.
